Flashy camerawork is the only through-line in a movie that sometimes seems like a story of downward-spiraling addiction, sometimes feels like a troubled romance, sometimes dips its toe in the waters of government and corporate corruption and ends up being a violent chase film.

“The Lincoln Lawyer” certainly feels made for the movies, with an intriguing central character — a just-this-side-of-shady defense lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) who works out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car — and a twistacious story that has us flipping and flopping about whether the lawyer is on the righteous side of his case.

Say you wanted to set up a tournament bracket in which classical composers are pitted against one another in a battle over who gets the most out of an orchestra in their compositions and arrangements. It wouldn’t involve too many upsets to imagine Maurice Ravel and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov facing one another in the finals.